Black leaders blast Carney government for excluding them from diversity council

Black advocates are calling out Prime Minister Mark Carney's government for launching a diversity and inclusion council without including any Black people — a move they say reinforces systemic barriers.

When Carney announced the Ministerial Advisory Council on Rights, Equality and Inclusion in February, the focus was narrowly framed: combating hate against Muslims, Jews, and Indigenous peoples. Anti-Black racism was not mentioned.

"We're tired of being an afterthought, tired of having to raise our voices to be heard and seen fully," said former MP Jean Augustine, the first Black woman elected to the House of Commons, speaking virtually at a press conference on Parliament Hill Thursday.

Amnesty International's representative for English-speaking Canada, Ketty Nivyabandi, called the exclusion a major oversight that undermines the council's credibility. "This is not a minor oversight. It undermines the council's very credibility from the outset, and it reproduces the very inequities it is meant to address," she said.

A spokesperson for Identity Minister Marc Miller said the council is still being formed and its mandate spans multiple discrimination issues, including anti-Black racism. "The council's membership is not yet complete, and the remaining members will be announced in the coming weeks," the statement said.

Nicholas Marcus Thompson, co-chair of the National Employment Equity Council, noted a troubling pattern. "At some point, omission becomes difficult to distinguish from indifference," he said. "I haven't heard the word equity being used by this government since it came into power."

The council replaces two previous special envoys tasked with tackling Islamophobia and antisemitism — positions that had higher public visibility under the Trudeau government.